Then, too, I want to get in a word about this most unusual Christmas Day—something seldom seen in my cold climate home state. As a rule you just don’t write on a tab out in the open, nor pluck roses in the wintertime, back home. Though, on Christmas Day, 1937, I cut four lovely long-stemmed perfectly developed Radiant Beauty (red) roses from a single unprotected plant, the one blooming plant among hundreds, in my rose garden in Northeast Kansas. And, to make it appear all the more unusual, Radiant Beauty was brought out in 1934 as a hot-house rose. Also, I needed a little data—and I got it from Sam in the rose garden. And this seemed the opportune time to write a few lines. It will not, of course, be a “White Christmas” here as is likely back home—never is in the San Joaquin valley. Sunshine and Roses enhance the beauty of the day here. But farther up—up in the high Sierras, up toward Mount Whitney, the highest point in the United States, only a few hours away, there will be snow aplenty today, tomorrow—and forever. This book is not my memoirs. It is not a family tree. It is not a complete history. But it is, sketchily, all of these things. The book is not a connected narrative. The articles, each complete within timely as of the date of the situation. Also, some of the characters depicted as living at the time of the writings have since died—but the stories are printed as originally written. And for clear understanding the articles should be read consecutively, as they appear in the book. These feature articles, pertaining mostly to Wetmore and Northeast Kansas, have all been written—some by request—for the home papers since my retirement from the newspaper field, in 1903. The first one, “The Boy of Yesteryear” was printed in W. F. Turrentine’s Wetmore Spectator, May 29, 1931. One or more of these articles have been printed in George and Dora Adriance’s Seneca Courier-Tribune—and, later, in Jay Adriance’s Courier-Tribune; General Charles H. Browne’s Horton Headlight; Will T. Beck’s Holton Recorder: Ray T. Ingalls’ Goff Advance; Senator Arthur Capper’s Topeka Daily Capital; and the Atchison Daily Globe. And all of them, with twelve exceptions, have appeared in the Wetmore Spectator. The twelve exceptions are recent writings—since the Spectator’s demise—rounding out topics previously introduced. Pictured with the writer in the forepart of this book are two of the principals of the old Spectator force during o ur newspaper regime through the “Gay Nineties.” While referred to often in the articles they had no part in the writing thereof. Regretfully, they were both dead before e beginning of these writings.